'Oh, then, you did play 'possum,' cried Frank; 'if you don't want to be found out, you shouldn't forget to snore another time, Dick!'
'Wal, you were too sleepy to try to stop me anyway,' continued Dick, 'and I couldn't rest in camp; I wanted to take a look at the Crows' camp and see if I could find poor Snap's body.'
Here a lump of pemmican seemed to go the wrong way and nearly choked him. When he had swallowed the obstruction he continued:
'About five miles from here I came on the Blackfeet—ran right into them; painters couldn't go quieter nor they were going, and they were all round me before I knowed rightly where I was.'
Here Warwolf, who understood English, smiled gravely, and, turning, repeated Dick's last sentence to his comrades, one of whom made a reply which seemed to express the sentiments of the rest.
'What are they grinning at, Dick?' asked Frank.
'Oh,' replied Dick, 'old Bear's-tooth said as it was only pale-faces who break twigs on the war-path. Wal, perhaps he's right. For sartin, they broke none to-day, but they broke a good many heads an hour or two later,' and the boys' eyes followed Wharton's to the gory trophies which hung by their long black locks from the girdles of the Blackfoot chiefs.
'Had our brother, the white hunter, been as ready with his scalping-knife as with his tomahawk,' interrupted Warwolf, 'there would have been more scalps at his girdle than at ours.'
It was a handsome speech from an Indian to a white warrior, and old Wharton acknowledged it.
'I don't spekilate much in that kind of fur,' he allowed; 'if I do take a fancy to trimming my shirt or pants, I rayther prefer grizzly to Crow.'